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Creative Data Solutions (CDS) is a Vanderbilt Shared Resource and has extensive experience in providing effective and robust solutions to challenges pertaining to research data using modern informatics and bioinformatics approaches.

de Caestecker Lab

Our laboratory currently has two major NIH funded research
interests:

1) We are studying the innate mechanisms regulating progenitor
cell expansion and tissue regeneration following acute kidney
injury, and evaluating the use of small molecules identified from a
high content screen in Zebrafish embryos for their ability to
accelerate these innate mechanisms of tissue regeneration following
injury. To this end we are developing a number of assays and
tools to evaluate renal epithelial cell regenerative capacity in
vivo, and are actively exploring the role of chromatin in
regulating these regenerative events.

2) Our lab is also studying the role of BMP signaling in
regulating reactivity and remodeling of the lung vasculature both
in normal individuals, and in patients and mice carrying a number
of different heritable mutations in the BMP type 2 receptor (BMPR2)
locus. To do this we are developing mouse genetic models,
reporters and along with Kevin Ess and Aaron Bowman, optimizing
reprogramming conditions to develop inducible pluripotent stem
cells (IPSCs) from patients with hereditary pulmonary arterial
hypertension (HPAH). We are also testing a variety of different
protocols to promote efficient endothelial and smooth muscle cell
differentiation of IPSCs in order to study the biology of BMP
signaling defects in the vasculature of patients with HPAH.

Other interests in the laboratory include the development of a
genetic model of Wilms’ tumorgenesis in mice, and the analysis of
signaling pathways governing asymmetric organ growth in mice with
late gestational placental insufficiency.